Biden doesn’t even have 50 votes for his clean debt limit hike
Conn Carroll
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After House Republicans passed legislation that raises the federal government’s debt limit, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “Avoiding default is Congress’s responsibility, and they should act on it without preconditions, as they have done in Democratic and Republican administrations.”
Setting aside for the moment that this statement is false, the debt limit has almost always been raised in conjunction with other legislative priorities.
Moreover, it has become exceedingly clear that Democrats in the Senate don’t have even 50 votes, let alone the 60 they would need, for the clean debt limit hike President Joe Biden is insisting on.
Democrats only control 51 votes in the Senate, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is currently too ill to vote. That brings them down to 50.
And Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he supports negotiating with House Republicans on their debt limit legislation. “Speaker McCarthy did his job and he passed a bill that would prevent default and finally begin to rein in federal spending,” Manchin said last Thursday after House Republicans passed their bill. “While I do not agree with everything proposed, it remains the only bill moving through Congress that would prevent default and that cannot be ignored.”
That means Democrats have, at most, 49 votes for a clean debt limit hike. But could they even get that many?
Democrats could have included a debt limit hike in either of the reconciliation bills they used to unilaterally add trillions of dollars to our government’s national debt. They chose not to — probably because they didn’t have the votes.
If Democrats couldn’t get 50 votes to raise the debt limit when it was attached to trillions in goodies for Democratic donors, what makes anyone think they have 50 votes to pass a clean debt limit now?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote a letter to his colleagues Monday, informing them that Democrats will be holding hearings on the House debt limit bill. This is a dead giveaway that Schumer doesn’t have the votes he needs for a clean debt limit hike. If Schumer had the votes for a clean debt limit hike, he would introduce such legislation and move it to a floor vote. The only reason he is not doing this is that he doesn’t have the votes.
Biden is either going to have to swallow his pride and negotiate with McCarthy over the debt limit, or he is going to have to mint the trillion-dollar coin, which, considering his immigration policies, isn’t as outlandish as it sounds.